| |||||||||||||
Some thoughts on MySQL and OracleSome thoughts on MySQL and OraclePosted Dec 17, 2009 14:03 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792)Parent article: Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle
I work for Monty and have been heavily involved with the EU process since August.
(Log in to post comments)
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 17, 2009 14:17 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Monty was fully aware that dual licensing model leads to vendor lock-in for the customers relying on the proprietary version of MySQL. It also mandated copyright assignments which directly resulted in MySQL never becoming a community oriented project. Crying foul about it now is certainly self serving. I don't think I have much sympathy for that. I am not buying the claim that MySQL cannot be self sustaining or profitable based on support/services instead of dual licensing either. I would also note that Monty's business now around MariaDB is not based on dual licensing.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 17, 2009 14:30 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] HiEverything you say is correct, except I don't understand the logic of you then saying what we do is self serving? As you say, part of the MySQL user base is locked in and (for all practical purposes) not helped by the GPL. This was by design, and Monty is to blame, yes. So what we have done is to explain to the EU and in public that MySQL being under the GPL is not a solution to all current MySQL users, they are locked in. So it is the regulators responsibility to do something about it. This is no different than if Oracle buys a proprietary SW company. Personally I have no doubt that MariaDB or some other descendant of MySQL will be stay alive. (self sustaining can mean many things...) But it cannot save the entire MySQL universe. So my point is, there is nothing self serving in asking the EU to protect the MySQL users which we cannot help. (This is the whole point of having anti trust regulation.) Monty or our company doesn't get anything out of it (quite the contrary, Oracle getting their hands on MySQL will probably be good for our business). Btw, it may be healthy to remember that a large part of the EU investigation had to do with market shares, "constraining Oracle" and other things, and the open source aspect of MySQL was just an interesting side track. But it is quite natural that in the community that is the side tract that most are interested in.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 17, 2009 15:32 UTC (Thu) by farnz (guest, #17727) [Link] The reason you are being accused of being self-serving is simple: Monty (as owner of MySQL Inc) created this situation deliberately, because it made him more money. He then sold the company to Sun, without putting restrictions on the sale that would have prevented Oracle owning MySQL, because that made him more money. Now that the sale to Oracle is in progress, you're complaining (effectively) that Monty didn't mean to sell the company without those restrictions, because Monty's that sort of nice guy, but he just forgot, y'know? You don't seem to be talking about offering the $1bn that was paid for MySQL Inc to Oracle to buy it back from them, or even a significant fraction of that; instead, you appear to be complaining that your reputation and future business model will be damaged if MySQL isn't treated specially. People other than Monty and his employees complaining is fair enough - they could not have taken action at the time MySQL was sold to avoid the problems you're now complaining about. However, Monty chose not to put these restrictions on the purchaser of MySQL; it's now rather self-serving to ask competition regulators to (effectively) fix his past mistakes that might doom his new venture, especially since I suspect he would have received rather less money for MySQL had he put these restrictions on from day 1.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 17, 2009 16:28 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] So half of what you say is right, the other half less so. (But it is probably right that this is why people accuse Monty, even if it is baseless, so I'm with you there.)It is absolutely right that MySQL business model was designed the way it was on purpose, deliberately, even to make money. And such a business can be sold to another business, etc... And from an open source point of view you might think this was a bad model and the reason we are now in this mess (debatable, but valid point). I guess it is good to point out yet again, that Monty was not in a position to decide anything about selling MySQL to Sun, and he did not get more than a few percent of the billion dollars. But that's not the point, there was nothing wrong in selling MySQL to Sun, whoever is responsible for it. In the case of Oracle, it is quite obvious (well, to me) that Oracle has a completely different interest in acquiring MySQL. The anti-trust regulator in Europe is rightfully concerned about that, it is their job to stop such mergers if proven to be harmful. So it is quite normal for anyone, whether Monty or a MySQL customer, to expect that MySQL can indeed be sold to anyone, but not to a competitor that just wants to reduce competition. (I realize especially in the US there is a common political opinion that you should be allowed to sell anything to anyone and the government shouldn't interfere, but that is a political view, and as it is now, we do have regulation.) So there is nothing wrong in helping the EU to do their job, which they are supposed to do, and there is no benefit to Monty (perhaps emotional, that's all) to be doing this. Anyway, I get what you are saying, that this is why people are blaming Monty, because many of them probably think along the lines you just said.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 18, 2009 10:42 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"It is absolutely right that MySQL business model was designed the way it was
on purpose, deliberately, even to make money. And such a business can be sold to another business, etc... And from an open source point of view you might think this was a bad model and the reason we are now in this mess (debatable, but valid point)"
I don't think there is much room for debate on that. Monty in his discourses
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 18, 2009 12:19 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] Perhaps so :-)Since personally I'm not the one who invented dual licensing, so have nothing to take credit nor apologize for, I can say that my personal opinion is that it remains to be seen if it is a sustainable model or not. It is a good way to produce great software which is GPL licensed. In some cases it may even turn out to have a happy ending, like is the case with Qt now. On the other hand, this risk was always there. Due to MySQL's and the model's financial success, it is becoming an increasingly popular model and more software is being created under a similar setting. It may be good for us to also be aware of potential pitfalls.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 18, 2009 13:09 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"It is a good way to produce great software which is GPL licensed. In some
cases it may even turn out to have a happy ending, like is the case with Qt now. On the other hand, this risk was always there."
Heh. Qt's happy ending turned out to be leaving behind dual licensing by
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 18, 2009 13:18 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] Yes, thank you.And: My point exactly with Qt, less optimistic with Oracle but time will tell. If they wanted to LGPL MySQL, they should have saved us these months of agony and done it long ago...
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 18, 2009 14:47 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Sun is too busy keeping its head out of the water to think about such
matters. Oracle cannot do it before acquiring them. I won't even say that it is likely but it does make sense for Oracle to consider it at some point after the acquisition.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 21, 2009 8:17 UTC (Mon) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] Actually, AFAIK, Sun has discussed it with Oracle and Oracle has rejected it.On the other hand, we shouldn't read too much into it. Majority of Oracle people haven't yet understood what significance it would have anyway (for instance, in conversations they would confuse MySQL commercial licensing (non-GPL) and subscriptions (GPL) and just in general when you can use the GPL version and when not). So if they one day turn around and do LGPL anyway, it can be explained with pure cluelessness. That, and having seen how Oracle plays this game, they could just out of principle refuse to do any compromises with the EU, then do the same thing anyway later. Just to make it clear they don't negotiate with anyone about these things. But as I said, assuming rational and informed behavior from Oracle, it would seem they are against LGPL.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 21, 2009 12:06 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"Actually, AFAIK, Sun has discussed it with Oracle and Oracle has rejected it."
Reference?
"Majority of Oracle people haven't yet understood what significance it would have anyway (for instance, in conversations they would confuse MySQL commercial licensing (non-GPL) and subscriptions (GPL) and just in general when you can use the GPL version and when not)"
This was a common accusation against MySQL Ab and then later Sun as well. So not specific to Oracle at all.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 21, 2009 13:00 UTC (Mon) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] Reference?Those discussions did of course not happen in public. (And no, I don't have first hand information, I could be misled myself.) This was a common accusation against MySQL Ab and then later Sun as well. So not specific to Oracle at all. I give you the Sun part, it was a big company and certainly most Sun employees had no clue about MySQL's business model either. But my point was exactly that it may be premature for me to say anything about Oracle's plans with MySQL licensing based on their current actions, since currently they don't even understand the basics of what the current situation is. So I tried to say that from all I can see I don't expect them to go LGPL, but if it happens, then this could explain why they didn't do it much earlier.
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 17, 2009 20:29 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]
I also liked the article and its conclusions, but I still have not understood one fundamental point: What is wrong with GPLv2?
The license will work as a license, going forward, certainly equivalent to or better than other open source type licenses. For example, the Linux kernel works very well under GPLv2, and with a sufficient community out there, does not seem likely to die soon ....
The worst that _could_ happen is that Oracle could buy the entire "developer community" and pay them to shut down the GPLv2 development process. Short of that, the product is out there, GPLv2, and can be used and developed under that license. I fail to see how a change to an Apache style license or any other one would change this. Certainly I fail to see why the license would impact the antitrust aspect of the case.
So any good explanation of that would be helpful. How exactly would a change from GPLv2 to anything else alleviate the fact that Oracle could simply pay everyone under their control to not develop anymore?
Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle Posted Dec 18, 2009 7:53 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] The significant difference is that the license used for Linux does not affect the software run on top of Linux (a.k.a user space). So you can run GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPL, BSD, proprietary software on a Linux system. This of course makes sense.For the GPLv2 version of MySQL this is not possible, and as discussed above this is by design, since the business model was to require proprietary SW makers to pay money for the privilege of using MySQL. (Imagine if glibc and other libraries used on Linux were also GPL all the way.) MySQL does however provide for a FOSS Exception, so that also other open source SW than GPLv2 can use it freely, with one exception... So if MySQL were controlled by a "hostile" party, proprietary software, and curiously GPLv3 software (which is missing from the list of FOSS exception licenses), could not use MySQL or a fork of it anymore.
|
|||||||||||||